


To prove herself worthy

by killing_rose



Category: Rizzoli & Isles
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-04
Updated: 2017-05-04
Packaged: 2018-10-28 02:31:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 575
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10821894
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/killing_rose/pseuds/killing_rose
Summary: Natalie (from She Works Hard For the Money), and the years after.





	To prove herself worthy

Natalie applies to the FBI. Before... in the time Before, she'd wanted to be a journalist or maybe a biologist, she hadn't quite declared her major her sophomore year of college. She hadn't had to, not yet.

But Detective Rizzoli changes her life. All of their lives. They talk, sometimes, about what they're doing in classes. They never talk about ...that..., though she will later find that it actually serves her well in her career. (She works sex crimes for a couple years, and poses as a prostitute at least twenty times. The bitter ash never quite leaves her mouth.) 

No one knows; Detective Rizzoli had never put her name, or the others' names, in the case file. After she's an agent, she knows damn well what the detective risked to do that. Her best friend died, her mistakes in the case file forever, but she was left anonymous. Natalie'd been forever protected by someone she loved, and a woman who went above and beyond for her. 

She's halfway through her time at the Academy, when she walks into a course and freezes. 

Detective... she's not a detective anymore, Natalie is shocked to realize, because she'd never thought that Detective Rizzoli would ever leave the BPD. But trainer Rizzoli never lets on that she knows her, much less from where, not until the course is done, and Rizzoli calls her name. 

"Yes ma'am?" she says, respectfully, because she is a trainee agent, and this woman can and does kick her ass regularly, even if she didn't owe her a debt she can never repay. It pays to be respectful to a woman who's survived being shot and stalked and targeted by serial killers and still come out on top. (If she is even half the law enforcement officer Rizzoli is, it will be enough.)

"You used your last two years well," Rizzoli says, a wry grin on her face. "I'm glad."

"I wasn't about to let it go to waste." She pauses. "None of us did. Cally went to law school, Jess to med school, Erin got a job on Wall Street, and Abby joined the Peace Corps." Rizzoli looks stunned, and Natalie's not sure why. "You changed our lives. I have never worn tinfoil since then, I can promise you that." Her trainer actually cracks an actual smile.

"You'll make a good agent," Rizzoli says. "It would have been worth it even without that." Natalie carries this praise, this recommendation, from a woman she trusts with her life, who changed everything, through a dozen postings.

When, seemingly a thousand years later, Jane Rizzoli dies --in her bed, at the age of 84, somehow getting through the BPD, the FBI, and rumor has it some time in a couple alphabet agencies, even partnering with someone to write more than a couple books-- Natalie Reed stands tall and says, "She solved a lot of crime in her day, and trained a lot of us to do the same. And I wouldn't be here if it weren't for her." A sliver of a smile, she won't say another thing, but wherever Rizzoli is, Natalie assumes she knows what she couldn't say aloud.

She'd made a stupid mistake. An incredibly stupid mistake that could have ruined her life. Should have ruined her life.

Because of Jane Rizzoli, she's a SAC herself, and she will never forget that. She will never stop honoring the woman for what she did.


End file.
